A Year In New York

I have neglected to mention Thanksgiving and the utterly different side of New York I saw over the long weekend. I rented a car and took a five-hour drive upstate to Wellsville, New York, all the way to end of a dirt road where my friend Rich Shear owns a farm. I met Rich on a strange trip to Mexico a few years ago and wrote up the whole account here.

Rich also runs ultramarathons and owns a shoe store. (You know, one of those endurance-athlete/shoe-salesmen/farmers.) He inherited the shoe business from his father and claims he started running as a means to escape it. No luck yet; despite being able to jog 100 miles in a stretch, Rich still puts on a button-up shirt and a tie each morning, after he’s done haying the horses.

Besides the seven horses, Rich and his wife Gwyn care for two pheasants, six cats, a pond of enormous trout and two potbellied pigs named Bullet and Bee Bee, who put on a comedy show for us here:

Meanwhile, indoors, two dogs lounged by the wood stove: Mo, the hyper one with a hip problem, and Aiken, who looks big and intimidating but is as soft as cream pie. On Friday, us humans tromped through all 170 acres of the property in a light snowfall, Rich pointing out the ash and maple and wild cherry trees. The dogs cruised around snuffling for squirrels.

I hope to visit Rich’s farm again when it’s green instead of white. Maybe we’ll have a barbecue on one of the grassy knolls.